


In the Line of Fire

by sarcasm_for_free



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Canonical Child Abuse, Character Study, Dysfunctional Family, Family Dynamics, Ficlet Collection, Fire Nation Royal Family, Gen, Manipulation, POV Second Person, Pre-Canon, Regret, Self-Doubt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-19
Updated: 2020-04-02
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:35:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23216356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarcasm_for_free/pseuds/sarcasm_for_free
Summary: You’re blessed.It doesn’t matter that you’re only fifth in line to the throne. (For now.)Chapter One: AzulaYou’re graceful, and if that means you can’t be free, opinionated, or loved, you’ll have to live with that since you’re presented with a question that’s no question at all.Chapter Two: UrsaYou’re a disgrace.It takes your world crumbling to ashes around you to drive the point home. No, away from home.Chapter Three: Zuko
Comments: 17
Kudos: 56





	1. You Are

**Author's Note:**

> Yesterday, I found this among my old uni documents. I was ready to cringe at my old writing, but – surprise – I liked it.  
> Never thought I’d write Second Person POV or present tense, but other!me wasn’t afraid to experiment with both, it seems.
> 
> Edit: After I found a few other fic snippets, and decided to post them as a trilogy, I changed the fic title and tags.

You’re blessed.

It doesn’t matter that you’re only fifth in line to the throne. (For now.) You’re destined for greater things. (It must not concern you that most nobles talk to you as if you’re a naïve little girl, blind to the machinations going on around you. Use it. They will regret underestimating you soon enough.)

You’re powerful.

A prodigy, born lucky. You can do things only a true heir of Sozin could achieve. Blue fire and lightning are yours to command. (What does it matter if Zuko’s a prodigy when it comes to swords? Nothing. No real bender would stoop so low as to use weapons instead of their element.)

You’re a vision to behold.

Girls should be pretty, seen but not heard, they say. But you strive to be more than just pretty. You strive to be everything anyone could ask for, wrapped in fine silk – Grace, Precision, Death. (Your definition of “pretty” might not be the same as other people’s, but these are the traits that count.)

You’re the child any parent of worth would be proud to call their own.

Witty, cunning, gifted, and loyal. Unlike your brother, you know how a child of royal blood has to behave, has to be. (Don’t dwell on the fact that your mother prefers to spend her time with Zuko, laugh with Zuko, talk to Zuko, hug Zuko. She’s weak and she recognizes the same in your brother. In the end, the weak bond only with the weak. You’re too good for them.)

You’re loved.

You have to believe it. (What does Zuko gain by being mother’s favorite, Uncle Iroh’s promising nephew, the prince the peasants adore because he’s kind to the unwashed masses, the one who asks questions the tutors deem „interesting“? Interesting is just another word for wrong. At the end of the day, he’ll still be second best.)

_The words stop and the shadow falling over your prone form recedes. He makes no sound as he leaves your chambers. The door closes and you’re alone again. Story time is over._

Silently, just inside your head, where everything’s out of order and still clear as day, you ask yourself if Father truly believes the things he tells you in the dead of night or if he just wants _you_ to believe them.

It doesn’t matter. You know who you are.

You’re Azula, and you’ll have the world at your fingertips.


	2. Virtues of a Lady

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I found this and another snippet in the same folder as the Azula ficlet and noticed that they would go well together if I just tweaked them the tiniest bit (like switching to second person POV).  
> Honestly, I looked at all three ficlets side by side and had an idea how they could be turned into art installations, and if imagining three whole rooms in a museum dedicated to your old as dirt ficlets doesn’t inspire you to finish stuff, I don’t know what could.
> 
> This chapter uses Ursa’s pre-canon back-story from the comics but ignores everything after her life as Fire Princess. (Ursa deliberately forgetting about Zuko is something I can’t work with, sorry.)

**Gratia**

You know how to be graceful.

Sometimes you think that’s all you’re good at. For not just one but two noble men, one in character, one only in name, to vie for your hand in marriage, you must be graceful. Nobody would want to take a little insipid twit as their wife.

You’re graceful, and if that means you can’t be free, opinionated, or loved, you’ll have to live with that since you’re presented with a question that’s no question at all. Someone else already answered in your stead.

If you’re to hold the position of Princess of the Fire Nation, you must be graceful.

So you learn how to accept defeat with grace.

**Melancholia**

A year ago, it would have mattered.

If he would have walked into the room a year ago, you would have looked at him, eyes only for him and not the rice and flowers throwing crowd around you.

He would have looked at you right back and you would have smiled at him.

He would have asked you to dance.

If he’d asked you a year ago, whisked you away a year ago, if the Fire Lord hadn’t requested your presence, you would have married him.

A year ago, it would have mattered.

Now, you dance with the wrong man.

**Silencium**

Silence comes easy to you.

It isn’t that you don’t have anything to say. Quite the opposite.

But too much courage, running your mouth – that could get you in trouble.

You couldn’t know it would be these same characteristics that would lead to the most horrible pain your firstborn would ever endure. Had you known, maybe you would have talked when it was your time.

Instead, you proved yourself to be a woman of action.

If you’d made a habit of speaking your mind, long before it was too late (too late for your happiness, too late for your daughter, maybe too late for your son), things might not be as they are now.

Yes. If you’d known, you’d have opened your mouth instead of your hand to let the phial full of the fine powder that would kill your father in law drop into your husband’s waiting arms.

You would have done it, just to spare your son the burden.

But you never did. You kept quiet, nodded, and only told your son in secret what was good and morally right. And now Zuko has to pay the price.

You’re ashamed and proud, huddled in the cargo hold of a ship on its way to the next colony town, always to the next town, where no one knows you exist but everyone whispers about the banished prince on their way between the latrine and mess hall.

You’re ashamed and proud, and only the latter feeling is directed at your son.


	3. Scream Like You Mean It

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Third and last part, where I close the circle with Zuko being a sad and awkward turtleduck that’s in need of a hug.  
> Title is from “Demons” by Icon For Hire.

You’re a disgrace.

It takes your world crumbling to ashes around you to drive the point home. No, away from home.

 _Banished_ is the last word you hear as the pain finally overwhelms you.

Black spots are the last thing you see.

Charred flesh peels off your face like thick layers of dried paint. It’s the last thought in your head.

When you wake up, there’s Uncle Iroh and not much else. You can barely see anything and the fever, he tells you, is making you delirious. You don’t feel delirious. You’re in too much pain to be delirious.

The first day you lie in the medical wing, you scream until you’re hoarse. Not at anyone or for anyone. You just scream. The amount of belladonna the healers give you drives a pinched frown onto Uncle’s face.

The second day, you cry for your mother. You might finally prove the healers right. Delirium probably feels like this. Or it could be desperation.

The third day, you don’t say anything at all. You just wait.

It’s at the end of the very same day that you realize your father won’t come.

Uncle stays by your side, only drifting from the room when the healers want to talk to him in private.

Azula visits you while he’s out, sneaking in behind the adults’ turned backs like a…sneaky sneak. (You might still be delirious.) She mocks you and your stupidity, nothing new there, but it’s strained. You truly begin to worry for your face when she doesn’t make a single crack about it. The jibes will come, that’s just how she is, but that it’s taking her some time to gather enough vitriol to do it is more telling than Uncle’s tearful eyes when the healers change your bandages.

Azula mocks you, but she came.

Uncle almost breathes fire when he sees her, yet in the end he just ushers her out with stern words, a stern face and other Uncle Iroh untypical behavior. He might be delirious too, you think.

When you two are alone once more, you hear that word again: _Banishment_.

For the first time you’re lucid enough to listen to the rest.

Exiled from Fire Nation territory. A ship. Uncle will come too.

The Avatar.

You grip the thin blanket Uncle’s constantly trying to pull over your shoulders as if you’re cold or frail or too dumb to do it yourself and wring the scratchy fabric between your hands.

The Avatar is probably a hundred years old, and has been gone for the same amount of time.

You’re thirteen. And your father thinks you can do it.

You against a legend.

It’s shameful, something a kid would do, but you ask Uncle in a small voice if he thinks you can do it.

The silence stretches too long.

“There’s always hope,” he says, and you get the feeling it’s not an answer to your current question but to one he hopes you’ll ask someday. (You’re definitely still delirious.)

Tomorrow, you’ll have to leave, get on a ship full of strangers and tell them where to go, which town to sail to, and the next town, and the next.

But you have to find the Avatar, and Father thinks you can do it, and Uncle said the same in a roundabout way, and Azula visited you, and you want to stop being a disgrace.

So there are two people, maybe only one-and-a-half, who believe in you. The rest of the world probably doesn’t.

You’re not sure if it’s the delirium talking, but you want to scream again.

You want to scream at the world, “ _Just watch me.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As the part that had to reference the other two and bring everything together, this was the hardest ficlet to write. This whole project was an out-of-the-box experiment for me, but I’m glad I did it.
> 
> Thanks to everyone who read it. Feedback would make my day, week, and month.  
> Stay safe and (fairly) sane <3


End file.
